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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24069829">Delphi's Question</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrookshanksAgentofOWCA/pseuds/CrookshanksAgentofOWCA'>CrookshanksAgentofOWCA</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne &amp; Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Voldemort Wins, Dad!Voldemort, Domestic Fluff, Evil Love, F/M, Voldemort CAN feel love fight me, casual mentions of murder, soft!bellamort</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 02:56:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,348</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24069829</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrookshanksAgentofOWCA/pseuds/CrookshanksAgentofOWCA</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When his daughter asks a surprising question, Voldemort is forced to confront his past and put an old rumor to rest once and for all.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bellatrix Black Lestrange/Voldemort, Delphi &amp; Bellatrix Black Lestrange, Delphi &amp; Voldemort (Harry Potter)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>71</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Delphi's Question</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Tired of hearing about how Voldemort can't love, so I wrote this. Then it kind of turned into Bellamort: A History. Anyway, just because Voldemort and Bellatrix are horrible, horrible people doesn't mean they can't be nice to each other.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Papa, do you love me?”<br/>
Voldemort looked up in surprise. They had been sitting quietly in the parlor together, Delphi playing on the floor, while her father sat on the sofa reading and Nagini slept, stretched out in front of the fire.</p><p>“Of course I do, hatchling. Very much.”<br/>
Delphi tilted her head.</p><p>“And Mama?”<br/>
“She loves you very much too.”</p><p>Delphi scrunched her face up, slightly frustrated.</p><p>“No, I mean…do <em>you </em>love Mama?”</p><p>Now Voldemort was even more confused. What could have possibly brought this on? Bellatrix wasn’t home yet, as an important round of interrogations had kept her busy at the Ministry. This wasn’t unusual, so he hadn’t been worried when he first received her owl, but now he started wondering if something else was going on. Did his wife feel he was neglecting her? Had she expressed such feelings to their daughter or had Delphi simply noticed something he’d missed? She was very perceptive.</p><p>Voldemort wracked his brain, trying to figure out what he could have done to upset Bella. As the new ruler of the wizarding world—in Great Britain at least, although they were working on expanding—he certainly was busy, but so was she. And now that his power was absolute, he no longer needed to pretend not to care about her in order to seem stronger. They had finally killed Rodolphus and gotten married, they had an incredibly clever daughter who was already showing signs of powerful magic and they were remaking the world together. Everything had seemed fine. Better than fine. He frowned at Delphi.</p><p>“Now what would make you ask a question like that?”<br/>
She shrugged, looking embarrassed.</p><p>“Delphi?”<br/>
She sighed.</p><p>“Sometimes people say…stuff.”<br/>
“What kind of stuff?”<br/>
“People say…that you don’t really love anyone. That you don’t know how.”<br/>
Now it was Voldemort’s turn to sigh. All those years he’d spent terrified of admitting his feelings and now the public denied those feelings existed. As if any of those people knew a thing about him. He put his book down.</p><p>“Come here, hatchling.” Delphi carefully made sure her stuffed animals—snake, dolphin and augury—were lined up neatly, then stood up and trotted over to her father, who scooped her up and nestled her in his lap.</p><p>“Do you remember what I’ve taught you about greatness?” he asked.</p><p>Delphi nodded.</p><p>“Greatness inspires envy, envy engenders spite, spite spawns lies,” she recited.</p><p>“Exactly. Your mother and I have done many great things and are probably the most powerful wizard and witch in the world. People are jealous of that and there are still a great many people out there who tried to stop us from gaining power. So they will say anything, do anything to convince themselves that there’s something wrong with us. They don’t want to believe we could possibly be happy. So they tell each other all sorts of lies.”</p><p>“But everyone seems so sure of it.”</p><p>“Of course they do. They can’t allow themselves to doubt it. If they admit I can love, that would mean admitting I’m not as much of a monster as they make me out to be.”<br/>
“So you <em>do</em> love Mama?”<br/>
“Delphi, I love your mother completely. How could you doubt that?”<br/>
She picked uncomfortably at her clothes.</p><p>“I was at your wedding,” she mumbled. “I’m a baby, but I’m in all the pictures. Most of my friends say their parents got married <em>before </em>they were born. Why didn’t you get married sooner?”</p><p>Voldemort smiled wryly.</p><p>“I’ve often asked myself the same question,” he admitted. “You see, Delphi, for a long time, I also believed myself to be incapable of love. When I was your age, I didn’t have a mama or a papa, or any friends. No one had ever loved me, so I didn’t know what love was. When I got to Hogwarts, I thought I could make friends, but everyone was either afraid of me or jealous of my power. I never found someone I could truly…rely on. So I decided I only needed myself. I gathered followers because I knew I would need help to fix all the problems in our world, but I never really cared about any of them. And they never cared about me, aside from the power I offered. Rumors began to spread that I didn’t love anyone because I simply was unable to. And of course these rumors were encouraged by Dumbledore, who was eager to discredit me in any way he could. But I didn’t really mind. In fact, I rather liked the idea that I was immune to such feelings. It made me seem less human, less weak. So I convinced myself that everyone was right about me. But then one day, I met someone who changed all that.”</p><p>Delphi smiled.</p><p>“Mama,” she said.</p><p>“Your mother,” Voldemort nodded. “It wasn’t as simple as everyone says—it wasn’t love at first sight.”</p><p>He paused for a moment.<br/>
“Well, perhaps for her it was. But she was very young and I was only looking for potential Death Eaters.”<br/>
“And she became the best Death Eater!” Delphi cried.</p><p>“She did. But not immediately. She was powerful and clever, but she still had much to learn about Dark Magic. I trained her and she became a Death Eater as soon as she left Hogwarts. In the years that followed, she demonstrated time and time again how vicious she was and how loyal to me. She mastered the Killing Curse faster than any of her peers and she had a special gift for the Cruciatus Curse. I realized quickly that she was the best of my new recruits, if not the best of all my followers.”<br/>
“So then you loved her?”<br/>
“Not quite. I was certainly impressed by her, but I was only just getting to know her. I continued teaching her more complex Dark Magic and as we spent more time together, we started talking. It was the first time I can remember actually enjoying conversations. Before I knew it, I found myself thinking about her when I had no reason to, looking at her longer than necessary and telling her things about myself I’d never told anyone. I had started falling in love, but I didn’t realize it at the time.”<br/>
“How can you love someone without knowing?”</p><p>Voldemort chuckled.</p><p>“Emotions are complicated, hatchling. Especially if you’re feeling them for the first time. I thought I was just happy to have such a ferocious warrior on my side. And your mother used Occlumency to make sure I never knew how she felt about me. And so we carried on that way for a while.”<br/>
“So what made you finally get together?”</p><p>“A few different things. For starters, your mother was forced to marry someone else.”</p><p>Delphi scowled.</p><p>“Rodolphus,” she said, with as much venom in her voice as any Death Eater saying “Potter” or “Dumbledore.”</p><p>“Indeed. She didn’t want to marry him and he didn’t deserve her, but her parents were very strict. They insisted she had to get married and she had to marry someone they approved of.”<br/>
“Didn’t they approve of you?”</p><p>Voldemort laughed.</p><p>“Well, they never got the chance to, since I didn’t realize how I felt about Bella at that point, but even if we had gotten together then, I sincerely doubt Cygnus and Druella would have liked it.”<br/>
“But you’re the Dark Lord!”<br/>
“Yes. An excellent political leader; someone to rally behind; someone who would put Mudbloods in their place. But not someone you’d want your daughter marrying.”</p><p>“That’s dumb.” Delphi said.</p><p>“It is. But, luckily, your mother did not feel that way. She married Rodolphus because she had no choice, but she never loved him. She avoided him as much as possible and spent more and more time with me. Eventually, we started dating, although I refused to call it that.”</p><p>That made Delphi giggle.</p><p>“What did you call it, then?”</p><p>“Nothing. I was very happy with your mother, but I still believed I couldn’t love, so I avoided discussing the details of exactly who she was to me. Like I said, emotions are complicated.”</p><p>“So…you were dating, but pretending you weren’t dating and you<em> still</em> didn’t love her?”</p><p>Voldemort laughed again.</p><p>“Oh, I did. I just hadn’t admitted it to myself yet. I knew I cared about her; more than I’d ever cared about anyone. But I had spent so long hearing that I was incapable of love and convincing myself that not only was it true; I was better off that way, that it was almost impossible to believe anything else. You want to know something very silly?”</p><p>“Yeah!”</p><p>“Sometimes, I found myself thinking about her and wishing I could love. Even though I thought love was a weakness, I could tell my supposed inability to love made your mother sad and I hated seeing her sad. <em>If only I could love</em>, I’d think, <em>then I would love her so much and we could both be happier. </em>What I failed to realize was that my feeling this way <em>was</em> love. But as the years went on, I couldn’t deny it any longer. I finally accepted that I loved her and, when the moment was right, I told her.”</p><p>“And was she happy then?” Delphi asked eagerly. Her father grinned.</p><p>“She was very happy. And so was I. But, a few years later, we were forced apart.”</p><p>Delphi nodded; she knew this part of the story.</p><p>“The prophecy,” she said. “Harry Potter.” She said the name in a hushed, tentative voice, as though it were a horrible curse.</p><p>“That’s right.” Voldemort frowned. He didn’t like to remember that night or the long, lonely years that had followed. But it was important for Delphi to know their history and he’d prefer she heard it from him rather than some stranger.</p><p>“Once again, my lack of experience with love hurt me. I thought I could outwit fate and stop the prophecy before it began. A baby was destined to kill me one day, so I’d kill him first while he was still small and powerless. Simple.”</p><p>He shook his head, still embarrassed by that old mistake.</p><p>“I did not count on his mother giving her life to save his or that act of love creating a magical protective force of its own. It was…foolish of me. I had grown too comfortable in my power and it made me arrogant. Your mother had asked me, again and again, to let her come to Godric’s Hollow with me. But I insisted that I could do it alone; that I <em>had</em> to do it alone.”</p><p>Voldemort sighed heavily.</p><p>“If only I had listened, it would have saved both of us a great deal of suffering. I was fortunate that she didn’t hold it against me when we were finally reunited. And it wasn’t long after that that a certain someone came along!”</p><p>He booped Delphi’s nose and she giggled.</p><p>“And when you arrived, I realized there was another, different kind of love I was capable of: the love of a father.”</p><p>Delphi smiled.</p><p>“I love you too, Papa.”</p><p>“Neither your mother or I ever expected to be parents but when you were born, we were so happy. And so proud. And a few months later, I was finally able to kill Potter and end the war and your mother and I were finally able to get married.”</p><p>Voldemort looked into his daughter’s eyes and said seriously,</p><p>“I love your mother and you very much. And I love the life we have together. It’s better than anything I could have hoped for.”</p><p>“So Mama’s not just your ‘hot little plaything’?”<br/>
Voldemort’s gaze darkened.</p><p>“From whom did you hear that?” he asked.</p><p>“Why?” Delphi grinned slyly. “Are they in trouble?”<br/>
“They most certainly are. <em>No one </em>disrespects your mother like that.”</p><p>“It was Amycus Carrow. He was talking to some other Death Eaters after the meeting last week. They didn’t know I was listening.”<br/>
Voldemort felt a surge of pride. His eavesdropping skills had been essential in his rise to power and it seemed his daughter had inherited them.</p><p>“I’m sorry you had to hear him say such a thing, but I’m glad you told me. Amycus must be quite sad and lonely to feel the need to spread such lies. I suppose I’ll have to do the merciful thing and put him out of his misery.”<br/>
“Can I torture him first?” a voice asked from the doorway. “Also, who are we talking about?”<br/>
“Mama!” Delphi cried in delight, launching herself off the couch and running to Bellatrix who picked her up and spun her around.</p><p>“Delphi! How’s my baby girl?”</p><p>“Mama, I’m not a baby!”<br/>
“You’re <em>my </em>baby.” Bella kissed the top of her daughter’s head. “Did you have a good day?”</p><p>“Yeah. Aunt Cissy took me to the park. And then Papa told me about how he fell in love with you.”<br/>
“Did he now?”</p><p>“I did,” Voldemort said, leaning in to kiss his wife.</p><p>“Did he tell you how slow and silly he was?” Bella asked.<br/>
“He did. But he said he loves you very much!”<br/>
“Wow. He even used the word ‘love’?”<br/>
“Yep!”<br/>
“Well—” Bellatrix gently caressed Voldemort’s cheek. “We have come a long way. So, who’s getting put out of their misery and how can I help?”<br/>
Voldemort smiled.</p><p>“Amycus,” he said. “But we’ll deal with him tomorrow.” Right now, the Dark Lord just wanted to enjoy being home with his family. “Have you eaten? I can call the house elves—”</p><p>“I had dinner at the Ministry, but I could use some dessert….”<br/>
“Dessert! I want dessert too!” Delphi cried, bouncing up and down.</p><p>“Delphi,” he father chided as they headed for the dining room, “You had ice cream earlier.”<br/>
“That was <em>hours </em>ago!”<br/>
“You know you need to eat healthy if you want to grow up big and strong.”<br/>
“Mama, can I <em>please </em>have some dessert?”<br/>
“Of course, Delph.”<br/>
“Bella, you’re spoiling her!”<br/>
“So? She’s <em>our </em>daughter. She deserves the best.”</p>
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